Carol & Roshelle

Roshelle, our 14 year-old grand daughter, (Rick's daughter) came over yesterday and slept over. We played video games all afternoon and most of today. She got me out of the place where I've been stuck in Tomb Raider Legend for a month or two. She's really good at learning the key commands for all of the moves and her reflexes are about twice as fast as mine, but when it comes time to get in a gunfight with the bad guys she turns the controls over to grandpa.

Happy Thanksgiving!

5:00 am
Carol was rattling pots and pans late into the evening yesterday, and she'll be back at it this morning in a little while.
Someone hit a deer in front of the house yesterday morning early, so now we've got a chopped up pine tree and a dead deer for holiday decoration.
1:30pm
I fired up the smoker and JC brought his champaigned ham over. We put it in the smoker to finish it off. Carol stuffed the Salmon with wild rice and bay shrimp and after a half an hour in the oven we put it in the smoker too.
Aubrey, Susan and Roshelle showed up followed by Tom and Deanna. With JC, Kelly, Carol and I that made nine of us, ( Carol made enough food for twenty!)
The deer is gone, hopefully the White Wolf Sanctuary lady picked it up for wolf food. She has a deal with ODOT for road kill.
We watched football while we ate and then when the game was over, the comedy channel.

Rainy days

We had a nice day yesterday, and I got most of the blown down tree sawed up. At least the mail-lady can drive up to the mailbox now.
The storms are back in full force today though. It's a good thing we have a lot of jigsaw puzzles saved up for this kind of weather, if the wind kicks up again we'll probably have more power outages. It's been quite a few years since we've had so many storms come through, one right after another.

Chanterelles instead of Chinooks

Well, we gave it a good try today, but the fishing gods were frowning. JC had a couple on and lost them and I didn't even get any tugs on my line. It was still a good trip as it always is, especially when you top out at the trail head and crack open a cold one.
At least we managed to collect some Chanterelle mushrooms which are great chopped up in an omelet or fried in butter on top of a steak.
If the weather follows the forecast, we probably won't have many more trips into Drift Creek this season, but catching one wild salmon there is worth all of the pain and sore muscles hands down.
I hope we can still be hobbling in and out of there when we're in our 80's.
Carol had one ambulance call today while we were gone, they transported a heart patient. This has been kind of a slow year for her, either the "frequent fliers" are dying off or getting healthy, I don't know which.

When it rains it pours.

It was a pretty busy day yesterday. The forecast was for rain and high winds, but in the morning when we looked outside it was warm and clear. I decided to gamble and try and get in and out of Drift Creek before the storm hit. I got to the trail head at 7 just as it was getting light, made it to the water, (which was still really high,) at 8 and caught 3 fish by 9. I only kept one, a 20 pound Chinook, just right for Thanksgiving dinner. The sky was looking bad and the wind was picking up so I hustled out of there in an hour, a record time for me.
We had the fish in the freezer by 10:30 just as the rain began. The wind got really strong and at around 5 in the evening we decided to go down to the fire station to get our flu shots. When we tried to pull out onto the highway we were blocked by a line of stopped cars because one of the Shore Pines in front of the house had blown over blocking both lanes. Carol directed traffic while I helped some neighbors saw up the tree and haul it out of the way. We never did get our flu shots.
We spent the rest of the evening listening to the wind and the scanner and doing a jigsaw puzzle.

Drift Creek?

It looks like a small break in the rain today but the streams will still be way high. Don't know whether to make another trek into Drift Creek or stay home and do jigsaw puzzles with Carol while she waits for an ambulance call. My last trip in was a soggy fishless day, but I did get some nice pictures on the way back up the trail.
Climbing out of there I realized that I've been hiking in there at least once a year, (sometimes four or five times) since 1981. I wonder how many more trips I've got in me.

Fall on the Oregon Coast

Well, so far the Salmon fishing has been pretty much of a bust. JC and I caught and released some fish before the rains started but now all of the streams are too high to fish.
We had a beautiful summer but it looks like 40 days and 40 nights of rain on the forecast.
We'll have to move our Sunday barbeques inside for a while.
We're going to have Thanksgiving dinner here this year and probably go to Brad and Donna's for Christmas.
There was a bumper crop of apples on the Yellow Delicious tree, and just when we were ready to harvest them a bear, (or maybe two bears, ) made a raid on us and wiped them out. All they left us with was a bunch of claw marks on the tree and nine huge piles of bear poop. At least this year they didn't break any limbs out of the tree.